The local's president, Joe King, has written Gov. Tom Corbett, calling on him to ignore Peduto's call to keep Pittsburgh under Act 47 state supervision for financially distressed communities.

King claims Peduto is trying to deny firefighters their rights because Act 47 supervision limits binding arbitration contract awards. The union letter to Corbett said, "the only reason that Mayor Peduto wishes to keep the City of Pittsburgh under under the stain of 'Distressed Status' is to wrongfully deny the City's first responders (firefighters and police) a meaningful right to engage in the collective bargaining process."

"I take it personal, only because this is like New jersey politics, OK?" said King. "Retaliation to say, 'OK, you didn't back me for mayor. Well, I'll show you what I can do.'"

Peduto says he's acting in the city taxpayers' interest.

"Joe King has a responsibility, it's to his 600 members, to make sure he can get them the most he can get. I have a responsibility to 310,000 people to make sure that we're living within our means and that we get out of this financial quagmire once and for all. We're not ready to do that," Peduto said.

Firefighters union Vice President Ralph Sicuro, who will succeed King when the union president retires this summer, said Pittsburgh's state overseers themselves say the city is ready leave the Act 47 program.

"The mayor is trying to drag the governor of this state into the politics of our city," Sicuro said.

King said, "That upset us, when you start talking about (limiting) collective bargaining -- our rights and privileges handed to us by constitutional law 50 years ago to defend firefighters and their families."

Peduto said, "Under the law, I cannot take away the collective bargaining. Collective bargaining will still exist. But it will exist under a system that makes sure we don't spend money we don't have."

He said, "We have pension obligations, we have debt obligations, post-employment benefits, and we need to work on long solutions to (obtaining) payments from our nonprofits. Until those issues are resolved, the city is nowhere near at a point where we can get out of financial oversight."

"The man's never been in an arbitration. He's never been there. And I've been through 14 of them. There's never been a tax increase on our residents based on the condition or awards of an arbitration," King said.

Pittsburgh's police union did not cosign the firefighters union's letter to the governor. Fraternal Order of Police president Sgt. Michael LaPortw told Channel 4 Action News he didn't want to comment for now, until he's had a chance to sit down with the new mayor.